‘Extremely surprised’: US comp setting tongues wagging

Henriques, who is captain of the NSW-linked Washington Freedom franchise, says there are not many “domestic” players in the competition who are not recent migrants from other cricket-playing nations, but thinks the quality of the players and grounds will help attract local talent to the sport.

He said the stacked batting line-up of his side, which features nine international players in the squad, meant his role would be significantly downgraded from in the BBL with the Sixers.

The 36-year-old has long been a middle-order enforcer for the Sixers with teammate Jordan Silk at the other end turning the strike over, but he said the standard of this competition was at another level.

He said the Freedom were armed with some “scary” international talent at the tournament, with the six franchises permitted to field six international players per game – twice as many as the Big Bash.

“I think I might be the Jordan Silk to (NZ batter) Glenn Phillips, he’s going to be the guy smacking it and I’ll be the guy coming in behind him either to fix the ship or continue on the back of his coat tails,” Henriques said.

He said the tournament will measure its success on whether it can lure local talent to the sport who can play at the highest levels.

“I was extremely surprised with how high quality the domestic players are, but I think at this stage, a lot of those players have only recently moved to the US from other cricket-playing nations,” he said.

“I think where we will measure this tournament’s success will be hopefully in years to come we’ll have domestic players with American accents … I think that will be the real feather in the cap when those domestic players have been here for a long time.

“Who knows, maybe in 10 or 15 years’ time we’re going to hear a captain in the IPL with an American accent rather than six captains in the US league with foreign accents.”

The tournament is based in Dallas, Texas during its first week and will move to a second venue in North Carolina before returning to Dallas for the playoff games.

“(Dallas) is a brand new square … I can’t say definitely how the pitches are going to play, but they look great,” Henriques said.

“It looks like there’s going to be a lot of runs – I think from what I’ve seen of the facilities so far it’s going to be a really good broadcast product, so it’s a pretty amazing opportunity for cricket here.”

The Freedom lost their first match but beat the Texas Super Kings by six runs on Sunday, as Australian Matt Short crushed 80 from 50 balls and Henriques chipped in with 21 and 1-5.

Originally published as New US T20 cricket league could change the game: Henriques